Shopify reviews whether the claims on your store are accurate and verifiable, and it can respond to claims that are not with payout holds, reserves, payout delays or closure of your Shopify Payments account. Its risk evaluation page names the accuracy of product descriptions and claims, the authenticity of testimonials and reviews, and claims about certifications, awards and media coverage as review criteria. Its eligibility page goes further for health products. Shopify pseudo pharmaceuticals, defined as pharmaceuticals and other products that make health claims not verified by a local or national regulatory body, are on the list of businesses Shopify Payments cannot support. The fix is the same in every version of this problem. Find each claim, decide whether you can prove it today, and either back it with documents or take it down. Below we walk through the claim types Shopify reviews, how each one shows up in common store models, how to rewrite and respond, and how to build a substantiation file that keeps the problem from returning.

What Shopify Treats as Unsupported Claims and Pseudo Pharmaceuticals

Shopify’s page on acceptable business practices and risk evaluation for Shopify Payments explains that your business is evaluated when you first apply and that risk is monitored continuously after that. If a review identifies practices that create elevated risk or undermine customer trust, the page says your account might be declined, deactivated or subject to restrictions such as payout holds, reserves or payout delays.

The same page lists what the review looks at. Two groups apply directly to claims.

Business practices and customer experience. The review evaluates the accuracy of product descriptions and claims, and counterfeit or misrepresented products, including items that misrepresent product origins.
Business credibility. The review assesses the representation of business credentials and history, the authenticity of testimonials, reviews and endorsements, and claims about certifications, awards or media coverage. Shopify states it wants these to be accurate and verifiable.

Shopify also explains why it does not wait for chargebacks. Its page says the store is held to a higher standard than the thresholds card networks publish, and that listings that do not match what is delivered, inauthentic reviews and unreliable fulfillment can indicate elevated risk even when chargeback rates are low. A store with a clean dispute record can still face a payments review because of what it says on its product pages.

Where pseudo pharmaceuticals fit

Health claims sit in a separate and stricter place. Shopify’s eligibility page lists high level categories prohibited by the Shopify Payments Terms of Service. Shopify names six of them, regulated or illegal products, financial products, adult products, gambling, counterfeit products and pseudo pharmaceuticals, and says the list varies by region. Pseudo pharmaceuticals means pharmaceuticals and other products that make health claims that are not verified by a local or national regulatory body. A supplement, tea, device or topical product that claims to treat, cure or prevent a condition without that verification falls into this category. The consequence is eligibility. Shopify Payments cannot support the product as described, whatever your chargeback history looks like.

How it is encountered

Merchants usually learn about a claims problem through Shopify Payments. Shopify’s page says reserve terms and holds are communicated through the store owner’s registered email address and notifications in the Shopify admin. Holds on payouts or charges can be placed during an account review, Shopify may request documentation, and accounts that show high risk behavior may undergo further review that can lead to closure of the Shopify Payments account. In severe cases payouts can be suspended or charges deactivated. Shopify does not publish a fixed sequence for these steps, and it describes them as tools applied according to the risk it sees.

The timing signals matter because they tell you how much runway you have. Shopify says a custom payout schedule can be imposed on higher risk businesses, and that payouts might then take from 5 to 20 business days. Its reserves page gives a fixed reserve of $1,000.00 USD for 120 days and a 10% reserve for 120 days as examples, and says each reserve has an expiry date after which release can take several business days. A hold is different. Shopify’s account holds page says you cannot receive payouts until the reason for the hold is resolved, orders placed during the hold are not paid out until then, and only the store owner can resolve it. Shopify gives no fixed number of days to reply, so the deadline is whatever date the email states, and a staff member who sees the notice should forward it to the owner the same day.

Claims That Do Not Match Delivery

The simplest claims problem is a gap between what the page promises and what the customer receives. Shopify’s best practices for keeping Shopify Payments in good standing start with this point, to provide accurate product descriptions and set realistic delivery expectations.

Typical gaps we see

Performance claims a product cannot meet, such as battery life, coverage, capacity or results after a set number of days.
Before and after images that do not reflect typical use.
Comparisons with named or implied competitors that the merchant has never tested.
Materials or ingredient claims that changed when the supplier changed.
Origin claims such as “made in” statements that the supply chain does not support.

Origin claims

Shopify’s review names products that misrepresent their origins. In the United States, origin claims have a precise legal test. The FTC’s Made in USA Labeling Rule, published July 14, 2021 at 86 FR 37032 and codified as 16 C.F.R. Part 323, makes it an unfair or deceptive practice to label a product as made in the United States unless final assembly or processing happens in the United States, all significant processing happens there, and all or virtually all ingredients or components are made and sourced there. A store that imports finished goods and adds a flag badge fails that test, and the badge is the kind of claim a reviewer can check against invoices. Section 323.4 treats a violation as a violation of a rule under section 18 of the FTC Act, which is why a flag badge carries more risk than ordinary puffery. If your goods are assembled domestically from imported parts, describe exactly that, and keep the supplier records that prove it.

Why delivery claims become payment problems

Shopify’s reserves page explains the money logic. Reserves exist so funds are available for disputes and refunds, for example when customers pay but the product does not meet their expectations. A product page that overpromises produces exactly that pattern, with refund requests, disputes and support tickets that all say the item was not as described. Shopify’s risk evaluation also considers refund and dispute resolution practices and the responsiveness of customer support. A claims gap therefore shows up in several of the signals Shopify reads at once, which is why fixing the copy comes first in any response.

The decoder breaks down the product claims that drift from what customers receive. Open each one to see what it sets off and what can be checked.

Business models that trigger it

Dropshipping stores with exaggerated benefits. Product copy is often written from the supplier listing or from ads that tested well. Neither is evidence. The compliant model starts copy from a sample the merchant has received and inspected, and states only what that sample does. When the supplier changes, the copy is checked again.

Supplement and wellness stores. These stores combine delivery claims with health claims, which puts them under both the business practices review and the pseudo pharmaceuticals rule. The compliant model separates structure or function language that the law in the selling region permits from disease claims, and keeps substantiation for each claim on file.

Stores built on imported or fabricated social proof. Reviews imported from another marketplace, reviews written by staff, testimonials with stock photos and “as seen in” badges for coverage that never happened all fall under the business credibility review. The compliant model shows only genuine reviews from real customers of this store, discloses any incentive, and removes badges it cannot verify.

Related guides include Shopify Restricted Product Removal Appeal Denied and Shopify Regulated Goods Authorization Rejected.

If a payout hold already names your product copy, our listing recovery team can audit the claims on those pages before you send anything back to Shopify.

Unverifiable Credentials and Certifications

The test in its best practices is direct, to ensure that business credentials and claims are accurate and verifiable.

The badges and phrases that cause the most trouble are familiar.

Certification seals for organic, cruelty free, clinically tested, dermatologist approved or similar, without a certificate or test report that covers the specific product.
Regulatory language that implies approval, such as a product being “approved” or “registered” by a regulator when it is not.
Laboratory and quality badges copied from the supplier’s page when the certificate belongs to a different product or facility.
Media logos for outlets that never covered the brand.
Claims about years in business, number of customers or awards that the merchant cannot document.

A certification claim is verifiable when you can hand over the certificate, it names your product or your supplier’s facility, it is current, and the certifying body can confirm it. If any of those four fail, the badge should come down until you have the document.

How to verify a certification before you display it

Get the certificate itself. A logo file from the supplier is not a certificate. Ask for the issued document with the certificate number.
Check the scope. Confirm the certificate covers the product, the formula or the facility that makes what you sell. Many certificates cover one site or one product line only.
Check the dates. Expired certificates are common, especially when a supplier changes factories.
Confirm with the issuer. Most certifying bodies run a public lookup or will confirm a certificate on request. Save the confirmation.
Match the wording. Display the claim the certificate supports, using the certifier’s own terms. “Certified organic” and “made with organic ingredients” are different claims.

If you cannot complete all five steps, remove the badge until you can. A missing badge costs little. A badge a reviewer cannot verify becomes evidence against the business credibility of the whole store.

Reviews and testimonials

Inauthentic reviews appear twice on Shopify’s risk evaluation page, as a risk signal and as part of the business credibility review. For US stores, the FTC published its Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials at 89 FR 68077 on August 22, 2024, and codified it as 16 C.F.R. Part 465. Section 465.2 covers fake or false consumer reviews and testimonials, section 465.4 covers buying positive or negative reviews, section 465.5 covers insider reviews, and section 465.7 covers review suppression. Even outside the United States, imported reviews are hard to defend in a payments review, because they describe a purchase that did not happen on your store.

Pseudo Pharmaceuticals and Health Claims

Health claims carry the highest stakes because they touch the eligibility rule directly. Shopify’s wording is specific, covering products that make health claims not verified by a local or national regulatory body. That gives the reviewer a clear question to ask. Has a regulator verified this claim for this product in the place you sell it?

Claims that commonly draw this review.

Treating, curing, preventing or mitigating a disease or condition.
Replacing a prescription drug or medical treatment.
Specific outcomes for weight loss, blood sugar, blood pressure, immunity, hair regrowth or pain.
Claims made through customer testimonials or influencer content on your store. A claim you publish counts as your claim, whoever wrote it.

Rewriting health language

Most health claims we review were not written to deceive. They were copied from a supplier, borrowed from a competitor’s page or written by someone who believed the product works. Intent does not change the reviewer’s question, so the rewrite has to change the claim itself. Three patterns cover most cases.

Disease to description. “Relieves arthritis pain” becomes a factual description of the product and its ingredients, with no reference to the disease. If the product only matters because of the disease claim, the product needs a regulated route to market or a different plan.
Outcome to evidence. “Lose 10 pounds in two weeks” is removed unless you hold testing that shows typical results for this product. The FTC guidance names randomized, controlled human clinical trials as the most reliable evidence for health benefit claims. On food sold into the EU, Article 12 of Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006 bars claims that refer to the rate or amount of weight loss outright, so that sentence cannot be saved with any amount of testing there.
Endorsement to source. “Doctor recommended” needs a named, real endorsement you can document, with any connection disclosed. If you cannot produce it, remove it.

Rewrite every place the claim appears. Reviewers look at product pages, but customers and banks also see ads, emails, packaging inserts and social posts linked from the store. A claim removed from the page but left in a popular ad is still a claim the business makes.

What the law says by region

Shopify’s rule rests on verification by a local or national regulator, so the law in each region tells you which claims can be made at all. Treat the table as a map of which statute to read for each market, then confirm the wording with counsel who practices there.

Region	Law	What it means for claims
United States	FTC Act, Section 5, 15 U.S.C. 45	Declares unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce unlawful. The FTC’s Health Products Compliance Guidance, published December 20, 2022, says health benefit claims generally need competent and reliable scientific evidence, and that advertising includes packaging, labeling and online content.
United States	16 C.F.R. Part 465	Published August 22, 2024 at 89 FR 68077. Prohibits fake reviews and testimonials, bought reviews, undisclosed insider reviews and review suppression.
Canada	Competition Act, section 74.01	Treats as reviewable conduct a representation that is false or misleading in a material respect, and a performance or efficacy claim not based on an adequate and proper test. The proof lies on the person making the claim.
United Kingdom	Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, sections 225 to 227 and Schedule 20	In force since 6 April 2025. Section 226 covers misleading actions, section 227 covers misleading omissions, and Schedule 20 lists practices that are unfair in all circumstances.
European Union	Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, Directive 2005/29/EC, and Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006 on nutrition and health claims made on foods	Annex I of the directive, item 17, treats falsely claiming a product can cure illnesses, dysfunction or malformations as unfair in all circumstances, and item 4 covers false claims of approval by a public or private body. Under Article 10(1) of the regulation, health claims are prohibited by default. The regulation allows health claims on foods, including food supplements, only where they are authorized and used under the conditions set for them.

Two practical points follow. A claim that is lawful in one region can be unlawful in another, so a store selling across borders needs the strictest wording that covers all of its markets. And Shopify Payments terms differ by country, with Shopify’s eligibility page linking separate prohibited business lists for 37 countries, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia and Japan.

When health products also fall into a regulated category, such as medical devices or medicines, our guide on Shopify dangerous and regulated goods covers the authorization side, and our guide on restricted and prohibited products covers items Shopify does not allow at all.

Rewriting Claims and Appealing

The response to a claims review has two parts that must happen in order. Fix the store first, then answer Shopify with the fix. Answering first and fixing later produces a response that describes intentions, which reviewers discount.

Step 1. Inventory every claim

List every claim on every product page, collection page, homepage banner, email template, ad landing page and image. Include badges, review widgets and testimonials. Mark each one as delivery, credential or health.

Step 2. Decide keep, rewrite or remove

Keep claims you can prove today with a document you can produce.
Rewrite claims that overstate what the evidence shows, so they say only what the evidence supports.
Remove health claims that no regulator has verified for this product in your markets, badges you cannot verify, and reviews that did not come from your customers.

Step 3. Write the response

Our method for these cases follows a fixed structure, and each part has a reason.

Position. In one sentence, claims are accurate and substantiated, and any misleading or medical wording has been removed.
Root cause. Name the overstated benefit, comparison, health claim or unverifiable credential. “Product pages for three supplements described them as treating joint pain, copied from supplier copy” is a root cause. “An oversight” is not.
Corrective actions. State what you have already done, with numbers, covering claims removed, pages rewritten, badges taken down, reviews unpublished and related pages audited.
Preventive control. A copy review step that screens new content for accuracy, substantiation and medical claims before it publishes, with a named owner.
Evidence. Before and after copies of the pages and the substantiation for every claim you kept.

Step through how we fix misleading claims on a Shopify store and then answer the review, in the order that gives the reviewer something to approve.

A composite example

The following is a generic composite drawn from patterns across many cases, and it describes no single merchant. A wellness store selling a sleep supplement receives an email that its payouts are on hold pending review. The product page says the supplement “treats insomnia”, carries a “clinically proven” badge from the supplier’s page and shows 400 reviews imported from another sales channel. The merchant’s first instinct is to reply that customers love the product. That reply answers nothing the reviewer asked.

The response that holds up looks different. The merchant removes the disease claim and the badge, unpublishes imported reviews, and rewrites the page to describe the ingredients and serving. It checks the ads and email flows for the same language. It then replies with a one page summary, before and after screenshots, the supplier’s ingredient specification and a description of the copy review step that now runs before anything publishes. The reply names the root cause as copy taken from supplier material without checking it, and owns it.

Step 4. Use the channel Shopify names

For a payments hold, Shopify’s account holds page says the fastest way to resolve it is to provide the information requested and reply directly to the email from Shopify. For a reserve, the reserves page says to reply to the email detailing the reserve terms within the timeframe it specifies, and notes that some reserves cannot be appealed. If the email lists requirements for removal, meeting them removes the reserve automatically. If your Shopify Payments account is deactivated, the risk evaluation page points to the appeal process for store termination. If a separate store restriction is involved, Shopify’s terms violations page says appeals of account restrictions are reviewed by a Shopify team member and the decision arrives by email.

If you are already dealing with held funds, our guide on Shopify reserves and holds over health claims covers the money side in detail.

First review compared with repeat reviews

Shopify does not publish warning tiers for claims. Its acceptable business practices page describes a range of tools, from payout schedule changes and reserves to holds, documentation requests, account closure and, in severe cases, suspended payouts or deactivated charges. In our experience, a first review answered with a clean, complete fix tends to stay at the payment control level. A second review on the same claims tells Shopify the first fix did not hold, and closure becomes more likely. Shopify also lists historical patterns across any businesses that you operate as a review factor, so a new store with the same copy does not reset anything.

Claim substantiation checklist

Every performance claim has a test report, specification sheet or measurement that covers this product.
Every certification badge has a current certificate naming the product or the facility that makes it.
Every health claim is permitted in each market you sell to, and is verified by the relevant regulator where that is required.
Every “made in” or origin claim matches the supply chain records.
Every review on the store came from a real customer of this store, and any incentive is disclosed.
Every media logo links to coverage you can produce.
Every comparison claim has a test or published data behind it.
Ads, emails and influencer content say no more than the product page.

Claim Substantiation File

Back every product claim and certification with documents, and remove unverified health claims. The substantiation file is how you run that lesson day to day. It also turns the next review into a same day reply.

What the file contains

Claim type	Evidence to file
Performance or result	Test reports, specifications, method and date of testing
Certification	Certificate, scope, expiry date, certifying body contact page
Health	Regulatory verification or authorization for each market, or a record that the claim was removed
Origin	Supplier invoices and manufacturing records
Reviews	Export from your review app showing order based reviews and any incentive disclosures
Media and awards	Link or copy of the coverage or award notice

How to keep it current

File evidence before a claim goes live. A claim without a file entry does not publish.
Recheck the file when a supplier, formula or factory changes.
Set calendar reminders for certificate expiry dates.
Review ads and email copy against the file, because Shopify’s review looks at how the whole business represents itself, and the product page is only one part of that.
Store the file where the store owner can reach it, since Shopify sends account notices to the store owner’s email address.

For a full prevention program built around this file, including weekly and monthly checks and staff training, see our guide on substantiating Shopify product claims and certifications. If the claims problem is about descriptions and shipping times, our guide on Shopify listing misrepresentation covers that review.

Business model navigation

Each model can run compliantly with the file in place.

Supplement and wellness. Substantiate every performance or health claim or remove it, and confirm each health claim is permitted in each market. Treat claims about diseases as off limits unless a regulator has verified them for the product.
Dropshipping. Write copy from the sample in hand, check it against the supplier’s specification, and recheck when the supplier changes.
Review driven brands. Display only genuine customer reviews, disclose incentives, and remove certification badges you cannot verify.
All models. Run new copy through a claims review before publishing, and apply the same standard to ads and emails.

Frequently Asked Questions

What claims does Shopify consider deceptive?

Shopify reviews claims that do not match what is delivered, credentials and certifications that cannot be verified, and inauthentic reviews and testimonials. Its risk evaluation page lists the accuracy of product descriptions and claims, the authenticity of reviews and endorsements, and claims about certifications, awards or media coverage as review criteria.

Are health claims allowed on Shopify?

Health claims that a local or national regulatory body has not verified put a product in the pseudo pharmaceuticals category, which Shopify Payments cannot support. Claims a regulator permits, made within the conditions set for them, are a different matter. The law in each market you sell to decides which claims are permitted.

What can happen for misleading claims on Shopify?

Shopify may apply payout holds, reserves or payout delays, request documentation, close the Shopify Payments account, or in severe cases suspend payouts or deactivate charges. Shopify communicates these actions through the store owner’s email address and notifications in the Shopify admin.

How do I fix a misleading claim on Shopify?

Remove the claim or back it with verifiable evidence, then reply to Shopify through the channel named in its email. Show the corrected copy, the substantiation for every claim you kept, and the copy review step you added to stop it happening again.

Do fake reviews count as misleading claims?

Yes, inauthentic reviews are covered. Shopify’s risk evaluation page names inauthentic reviews as a risk signal and assesses the authenticity of testimonials, reviews and endorsements. In the United States, 16 C.F.R. Part 465 also prohibits fake reviews.

Get Help With Shopify Claims Issues

When a brand’s positioning depends on claims it cannot substantiate, a rewrite is more than an edit. We audit the store’s claims, build the substantiation file, rewrite messaging so it stays persuasive and compliant, and prepare the response to Shopify with the evidence attached.

Hand it to our Shopify suspension and reinstatement service and our listing recovery service, submit your case for review, or book a consultation to review your claims before Shopify does.

Shopify is one of several platforms we handle, and the marketplace suspension services hub lists the rest.

How to Fix Misleading Product and Health Claims on Shopify